Installing Window Maker

Mr. Hammel gives us the basics for installing and configuring Window Maker.

The source for Window Maker can be
retrieved from the primary web site at
http://windowmaker.org/.
You'll need two packages from this site: the source distribution
and the libPropList source
package. The latter package is a library used by Window Maker,
which you must build and install before attempting to build Window
Maker. End users probably won't refer to it much after building
Window Maker, so we'll just look at getting it installed. At the
time of this writing, the latest version of libPropList is 0.91 and
the latest version of Window Maker is 0.61.

In order to make use of fancy graphics, you'll need the
standard set of graphics libraries: libpng, libtiff, libjpeg,
libgif and libXPM. All of these are fairly standard on newer Linux
distributions. If you have an older version (more than two years
old), you may want to check if these libraries are installed. If
not, check Freshmeat
(http://freshmeat.net/)
for where to find the latest versions.

One other optional library is GNU xgettext. This library is
needed only if you plan to use a language other then English, and
then only if you want the messages displayed by Window Maker to be
in that language. You won't need it, for example, if your root menu
is in French. Internationalization is a topic all to itself, and
since I have enough problems with English, I will leave it to
someone better suited to its discussion.

If you're installing from source and you
use Red Hat, there are a few rules to follow:

package is the package name returned by the first
command. If no package name is returned, then skip the second
command.

Make sure the LANG and
LINGUAS environment variables are not set to
en_RN:

set | grep LANG

If this returns anything, then type:

unset LANG

Similarly,

set | grep LINGUAS
unset LINGUAS

Make sure there is a link from /usr/include/X11 to
/usr/X11R6/include/X11:

ls -ol /usr/include/X11

If this returns “No such file or directory”, then
type:

ln -s /usr/X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include/X11

Building is a breeze if all the prerequisites are installed.
I installed under /usr/local/WindowMaker (both the libProplist and
Window Maker packages), which required updating the /etc/ld.so.conf
file and running ldconfig
afterwards.

We'll skip installing the graphics libraries, since most
users will probably already have these. Once you've downloaded
them, unpack the libPropList and Window Maker source packages into
their own directories using the following commands:

tar xvzf libPropList.tar.gz
tar xvzf WindowMaker-0.61.tar.gz

This will create directories called libPropList-0.91 and
WindowMaker-0.61. Note that the file name is dependent on whatever
the current versions are.

In the libPropList directory, there is an editable
configuration file (plconf.h), but this probably isn't necessary.
Just run the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/WindowMaker
make

The first command configures the source to be installed under
/usr/local/WindowMaker. If you've read any of my other articles,
you'll know I install new packages in their own directories under
/usr/local. Since so many Linux applications are evolving entities,
this sort of product management makes upgrading from source code
much simpler. In this case, since I don't expect to use libPropList
for anything other than Window Maker, I'll just stuff it into the
same place I'm going to install the Window Maker files.

Once the source has been compiled (via the
make command), you need to change
to the root user via su or
sudo and run the following
command:

make install

At this point, libPropList is installed, and you will most
likely not have to deal with it any further. Be sure to exit from
the root user account.

Building the Window Maker source is just as simple. The
configure script has many options. Although you probably won't need
to use any of these options, you should still read the INSTALL file
to be certain. Options that might be useful include
--enable-kde to run Window Maker with KDE,
--enable-gnome to run Window Maker with GNOME,
and --enable-sound if you like annoying sounds
associated with certain actions on the desktop.

I'm not going to be using Window Maker with GNOME or KDE, so
my configure command looks like this:

Note: the “\” is a continuation character which allows you
to spread a command over multiple lines.

Now, we just need to build and install the package:

make

Change to the root user and run:

make install

The last step for installation of the Window Maker source package
is to make sure the Window Maker and libPropList libraries can be
found when you run the window manager. To do this, run the
following commands:

echo "/usr/local/WindowMaker/lib" >> \
/etc/ld.so.conf
ldconfig

The first command appends the directory name to the end of the
ld.so.conf configuration file. The second command tells the
operating system to reload that configuration because a change was
made.

The last three commands were all run as root, so now you can
exit from the root user back to your normal user account.

The next step is to install the Window Maker data package,
which includes a set of pixmaps for use with Window Maker. This
package requires manual installation by copying the pixmaps to the
proper directory. Change to the WindowMaker-data directory (after
unpacking it). If you installed Window Maker in the default
directory, /usr/local, then you can use the following
command:

cp -r pixmaps /usr/local/share

In our case, we installed under /usr/local/WindowMaker, so
we'd use a command like this instead:

cp -r pixmaps /usr/local/WindowMaker/share

Finally, make sure the Window Maker binaries and scripts can be
found by adding them to your PATH environment variable: